Locorotondo and the valley belvedere

The name means round place, and the plan is exactly that: the old town is an oval of white houses laid in concentric rings on top of a low hill, with the streets curving so that you never see more than thirty metres ahead. It is about twenty kilometres from Ostuni, half an hour by car, at the other end of the Valle d'Itria.

What makes Locorotondo different from every other white village down here are the cummerse — steep gabled roofs of thin limestone slabs, found in this one town and nowhere else in Puglia. They give the skyline a jagged, alpine look that reads immediately in a wide shot.

The belvedere on the southern edge is the frame everyone comes for: a low wall, a row of benches, and below it the whole valley of vineyards, dry-stone walls and scattered trulli. It faces roughly south-west, so the end of the afternoon lights the valley and leaves the town wall in shadow — stand on the wall side and shoot outwards.

Inside, the curving lanes are narrow, spotless, and hung with geraniums; nothing here is more than five minutes from anything else, so one hour covers both the ring and the view.